The Frame

Search

Skip to content

Chrono Project
Chronological Looney Tunes
American Movie Critics
Watching with Kiddos
He Says She Says
The Roundup

Search for:

Nothing Found

It seems we can’t find what you’re looking for. Perhaps searching can help.

Search for:

Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.

- Martin Scorsese

Commonplace

“The demand for ‘originality’ – with the implication that the reminiscence of other writers is a sin against originality and a defect in the work – is a recent one and would have seemed quite ludicrous to poets of the Augustan Age, or of Shakespeare’s time. The traditional view is that each new work should be a fresh focus of power through which former streams of beauty, emotion, and reflection are directed. This view is adopted, and perhaps carried to excess, by writers like T.S. Eliot, some of whose poems are a close web of quotations and adaptations, chosen for their associative value; or like James Joyce, who makes great use of the associative value of sounds and syllables. The criterion is, not whether the associations are called up, but whether the spirits invoked by this kind of verbal incantation are charged with personal power by the magician who speeds them about their new business.”

Dorothy L. Sayers, The Mind of the Maker

Dorothy Sayers on originality
July 26, 2019 Jandy Leave a comment
“There’s an old story, borne out by production records, about [producer] Arthur Hornblow Jr. deciding to exert his power by handing [Billy] Wilder and [Charles] Brackett’s fully polished draft [of the screenplay for 1939’s Midnight] to a staff writer named Ken Englund. (Like many producers, then and now, Hornblow just wanted to put some more thumbprints on it.) Englund asked Hornblow what he was supposed to do with the script, since it looked good enough to him. “Rewrite it,” said Hornblow. Englund did as he was told and returned to Hornblow’s office with a new draft whereupon the producer told him precisely what the trouble was: it didn’t sound like Brackett and Wilder anymore. “You’ve lost the flavor of the original!” Hornblow declared. Englund then pointed out that Brackett and Wilder themselves were currently in their office doing nothing, so Hornblow turned the script back to them for further work. Charlie and Billy spent a few days playing cribbage and then handed in their original manuscript, retyped and doctored with a few minor changes. Hornblow loved it, and the film went into production.”

– Ed Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder

On Midnight‘s Screenplay
November 28, 2014 Jandy Leave a comment

More quotes →

The Past

More About Me

Films I’ve Seen
Books I’ve Read
Portfolio

Top Tens

My Top Tens: 2010s
My Top Tens: 2000s
My Top Tens: 1990s
My Top Tens: 1980s
My Top Tens: 1970s
My Top Tens: 1960s
My Top Tens: 1950s
My Top Tens: 1940s
My Top Tens: 1930s
My Top Tens: 1920s
Films I’ve Seen

Watch Lists

Upcoming Theatrical Releases
The 100% Club
1001 Films You Must See Before You Die
They Shoot Pictures Top 1000
Roger Ebert’s The Great Movies
The Criterion Collection

Proudly powered by WordPress